Jackson, Miss. Deals With Ongoing Water Crisis
Staff Sgt. Connie Jones, U.S. Army National Guard, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Residents in and around Jackson, Miss. struggle to gain access to safe drinking water.
JACKSON, Miss. - Imagine coming home from a long day of work and as you’re getting your water ready for a relaxing bath, no water comes out or getting tap water from the sink faucet to boil pasta or rice and it comes out brown! From mid-August to early September, this was the norm for the residents of Jackson, Mississippi, and the surrounding areas. They had no access to clean drinking water as well as significantly low water pressure due to the failure of the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant. The failure of the plant is linked to the flooding of the Pearl River because of excessive storming in the state.
“The entire city of more than 150,000 was without safe drinking water, with no end in sight,” reporter Emmanuel Felton said in an article for the Washington Post. “Even when the water is flowing from the taps, residents struggle with intermittent boil-water advisories and high bills for water that is not always safe to drink.”
While some parts of the city are better than others, most of the city and the surrounding areas have been unable to consume the water that comes out of their faucets. Many residents, especially in West and Southern Jackson, had no choice but to buy bottled water because of the lack of water pressure and unsanitary water.
“We were on a boil water alert for over a month and a half.”
“We were on a boil water alert for over a month and a half,” Carolyn Ann Rollins, 70, said. Rollins is a post office worker in Ridgeland, a city just north of Jackson. “I only use the boiled water for washing dishes and bathing, we use bottled water for everything else.”
Not only has the crisis-affected people in their homes, but it has also affected local businesses and schools. If businesses, especially restaurants, have no clean water or sufficient water pressure, then they can’t make food. Schools have had to adjust to this because it is unsafe to have children in a building without clean running water.
“This crisis is hurting our businesses and schools more than anything, when I drive around the city, many places are shut down,” said Belinda Rollins, 42. Belinda is a mother of two kids who are in school. “Some schools are sending their students to other schools in the areas of town where the water is running, and some students had to move to virtual learning for over two weeks.”
“This has been something we’ve been crying out for more than two years, saying that it’s not a matter of if our systems will fail, but a matter of when our systems will fail.”
Although this has recently been brought to the national public, the city of Jackson has long struggled with its water system. This has been a problem in the city for the past couple of decades and for the past few years the condition has only grown worse. The failure of the water plants is a result of long-term neglect. The state has failed to send support for the ongoing struggle of the Jackson water system.
“This has been something we’ve been crying out for more than two years, saying that it’s not a matter of if our systems will fail, but a matter of when our systems will fail,” the mayor said in an article for Democracy Now. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has been the mayor of Jackson since 2017 and has been trying to improve the city over the years. “We’ve been saying that we need resources…this is a matter of deferred maintenance that has happened over decades.”
On Sept. 5, the water pressure was restored to the city of Jackson. Although there was sufficient water pressure, residents in and around the area were advised to boil their water before using it. Finally, on Sept. 15, the boil water advisory was lifted, and the water was safe to consume. The state government is now sending more funds to maintain the water systems throughout the poorer sections of Mississippi. Now, after decades of water issues, the residents of Jackson may finally go to sleep knowing that the water will come on the next morning.
Related Reading:
